Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Thursday February 03, 2011 @09:24AM
from the pay-better-attention dept.

iDuck writes "When Wolfire Games released their animal martial arts game, Lugaru HD, on the Mac App store, they could be forgiven for thinking they were seeing double. A counterfeit version of the software is currently available on the app store at a much lower price point under the name Lugaru. The best bit: as yet Apple have not responded to Wolfire's emails to rectify the situation. While the source to the game was GPLed, 'the license made it very clear that the authors retained all rights to the assets, characters, and everything else aside from the code itself.'"

No, it's perfectly kosher to have GPLed source code but non-GPLed game data.

See the various Quake GPL releases - it has NEVER been legal to use that GPL code to play the original game unless you legitimately owned the data.

It took quite a while before "standalone" games were created based on the Quake1/2/3 GPL release code, in these cases ALL of the game data was replaced with new (typically Creative Commons-licensed) data.

I don't think anyone would have an issue here if the Lugaru HD engine were being used with all-new artwork. The problem here is that the Lugaru HD artwork/data is being re-released by the pirates at a much lower price, and Apple is supporting this piracy by not responding to the emails from the owner of the original artwork/data.

Say what? There's nothing in the GPL that prevents you from selling your software, or software written by someone else and released under the GPL (as long as you don't change the licence and make the source available).

I've seen too many stupid comments about this today and yesterday, so I'm going to clarify a few points:

1. The SOURCE CODE to the EXECUTABLE was released as GPL.2. GPL DOES, in fact, allow you to sell your build of that executable.3. While they did distribute the assets (textures, models, sound, etc.) with the source code, those assets WERE NOT distributed via GPL.4. GPL is for source code, not assets. For that, you're looking at a creative commons type license for something similar.5. The assets were distributed with a "you can do anything BUT SELL IT" license

Meaning, as they charge $2.00 for it, Lugaru (non HD) is in blatant copyright violation. Never mind, using the name is probably a blatant trademark violation.

I think a lot of games (especially indie type titles) could benefit from going open source, while keeping tight hold on their assets. Sell the textures, models, and sounds, and give the source away. If someone wants to "steal" your game, they're going to have to build the rest themselves from scratch. It would help both in keeping tiny titles like that away from falling into the abandonware pit (especially if it's incompatible with modern OS's), and helping aspiring game devs in understanding how game logic works.

You're incorrect. A price is a pure scalar; any price is as much of a price as any other. $.03, $1.95, $43.00 are all equally prices, and all different. Price points are positions in the price spectrum. $0.99 is price point, and it is a price point shared with $0.95. $0.65 is less of a price point, or you could say it was a less relevant price point.

Granted, some people use the terms incorrectly, saying price point when they should be saying price. Price point is only really relevant when talking about multiple prices or multiple products.

unless your 'consignment' store is a pawn shop in Florida... if your house is broken into and you subsequently find your items in a pawn shop you must buy them from the pawn shop if you want them back - and the pawn shop is not liable

This is untrue in the vast majority of the country. Pawn shops in most states have a legal responsibility to actively try to prevent stolen items from being sold and, their possession of your property, regardless of is they paid for them, does not transfer legal ownership to them, since they paid someone who did not own the goods. In almost every state pawn shops have to return stolen goods to the rightful owner and eat the loss. The police generally confiscate goods for the investigation then return them to the original owner. If the police do not do this, some pawn shops will try to claim payment from you. This is when you go to small claims court or (if valuable enough) file suit against the pawn shop. They will lose if you can show the goods are in fact probably the ones stolen from you (you don't even need beyond a reasonable doubt for a civil case like this, just probable).